Micky sat up a bit straighter. She felt put on the spot but also, strangely, understood on a level Amber never did. “Why did you ask me out and sleep with me?”
“Because I was attracted to you and I’m used to following my instincts.” Robin said it as though it were the most obvious statement ever made.
Micky wanted to ask, Me? You were attracted to me? Not that she considered herself unattractive in general, but compared to Robin and, she imagined, compared to the kind of women Robin usually slept with, she considered herself dowdier, more homely than attractive. Though, of course, Micky had no idea of the kind of woman Robin usually courted. She was getting curious about Michelle, Robin’s Hong Kong non-girlfriend.
When Micky didn’t say anything, Robin continued. “I don’t have relationships out of necessity, or at least, that’s how I’ve always seen it. It could of course also be because I never met that woman, but this arrangement I have with myself suits me just fine. Knowing that you’re experimenting and trying to find yourself, so to speak, doesn’t faze me for that very reason, Micky. I think we can have some good fun together.”
“No strings attached.” Micky repeated the phrase Robin had used the previous week.
“And no rules.” Robin stared straight ahead of her. “What do you say we go and have some fun on the beach?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As far as beach days went, this one was a rather uncomfortable one for Micky. Not because of the growing crowds as time crept more toward midday or the sand that invariably got stuck in places she didn’t want it to, but because every time she looked at Robin, in her glorious, flawless bikini body—outlined abs, muscled thighs, toned shoulder-line—she felt something twinge in the pit of her stomach. Something she didn’t recognize because she really didn’t want to. She didn’t want to acknowledge that spending time with Robin made her feel more alive than she had in a decade. That lying next to her, uncomfortably, on a beach towel while staring into the surf, made her feel things she had never felt before. Things that were taking her whole being by storm.
Was she experimenting? She pondered that question in the moments when Robin had her eyes closed and their conversation stalled. Hell yeah, she was. But there was more to it than that. No strings attached and no rules was all well and good, but it also implied that no feelings other than being friends could blossom here, and how on earth was Micky supposed to stop that?
“Penny for your thoughts,” Robin said, glancing at Micky with one eye open and the other squeezed shut.
By then, they’d gone into the water twice—its temperature a little too chilly for Micky’s taste, though it didn’t seem to bother Robin—and Robin had, with deft but oh, so sensuous strokes, smeared sunscreen on Micky’s back.
“The crowd’s getting a bit too thick for my taste.” Micky grabbed her chance. “How about we get out of here?”
Robin didn’t say anything, not with words anyway, just plastered a big grin on her face and nodded. Instantly, deep inside of Micky, that fire started up again. The one that had been stoked the moment Robin had approached her at The Pink Bean and, so very unexpectedly, made a move on her.
In the car, Micky’s entire body seemed to turn into one ultrasensitive synapse. It felt as though Robin was already stroking her—she could still feel the press of Robin’s thumb under her shoulder blade where she’d applied sunscreen to her back earlier. Micky was getting ready for that big plunge into headiness and sexiness and that other world she’d discovered, that existed parallel to the one she’d been inhabiting for forty-four years but had been too afraid to visit—or even acknowledge its existence.
It was a long drive back to Darlinghurst, though most traffic was going in the opposite direction. They passed cars with surfboards strapped to the roof, with people chatting and laughing behind the wheel. When they crossed a car with a husband and wife in the front and two children in the back, and Micky glanced at it for a while longer in the rearview mirror, her foot firmly on the gas pedal, it felt as though she was, rapidly and unstoppably, driving away from her past.
Micky wanted so very much to listen attentively to what Robin was saying about the vast differences between Sydney and Hong Kong. She caught fragments of sentences like “less frenetic,” “more humane,” and “a million fucking times more friendly,” but Micky couldn’t possibly focus her attention on Robin’s words. She was in a state of expectation, of wanting what was going to happen next so badly—of needing it as though her life depended on it—that she was afraid that if she let her eye off the ball, if she didn’t keep driving the way she was, propelling them in the direction of her house, where she would finally be able to take off her clothes and meet Robin skin-to-skin and become that woman again that Robin had made her, that the moment would pass. That it wouldn’t happen. That Robin, and all the things she stood for, would slip through her fingers.